


While the Going is Good

by mightbeanasshole



Series: Better Luck Next Time (Call Boy AU) [4]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-25 00:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3790258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Geoff spends the night at the little house that Ray and Michael share in Sparks, Nevada, it’s a week after New Year’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	While the Going is Good

The first time Geoff spends the night at the little house that Ray and Michael share in Sparks, Nevada, it’s a week after New Year’s.

Jack and Ray are out of town on a special call, so Jack’s given all the other boys the week off--though he’s told them to keep their phones on in case anything special comes through.

Michael had called Geoff on Thursday, asking if he had any plans for the next two days.

Michael prepares for the inevitable jokes.

He imagines Geoff chuckling into the phone, saying something like “A whole night Michael? Do you really think you can afford me?” as if he’d never heard shit like that before.

At the close of the conversation, Michael is surprised at how pleased he is that Geoff has made no such joke.

Geoff just asks him what he should bring over, if anything. Asks Michael if he can cook dinner for them on Friday night. Asks for, in the end, Michael’s address and what time he should make the short drive from Reno to Sparks.

And then on Friday night, Geoff shows up with a nice bottle of gin, a big bouquet of wildflowers, and everything it would take to cook them two nice steaks, fingerling potatoes, roasted carrots. Michael opens the door in his underwear and Geoff is unfazed.

“Before you say anything, the bouquet came from Whole Foods,” Geoff says with a too-big smile as he holds out the mis-matched and colorful flowers, wrapped up in a cone of butcher paper. “I’m not actually capable of putting something together that’s this pretty.”

Which is a lie, Michael knows, because he’s seen some of Geoff’s art--game theming concepts in watercolor, in collage--peeking through the half-open door of the studio in Geoff’s condo. He doesn’t like to show it off, Michael had learned. And even if, in the end, the art got perverted into what amounted to a pile of Lisa-Frank-looking pop art vomit on the front of the latest slot machine, the man is talented.

Geoff finds his way around easily in the linoleum kitchen, every appliance at least twenty years older than its shiny counterpart in Geoff’s own kitchen. He makes them gin and tonics and they share a smiling, wordless toast.

Michael isn’t ashamed of the house--a bungalow from the seventies flanked by desert scrub. He’s not intimidated by Geoff’s condo. And to his credit, the man looks completely at home here in his Black Flag t-shirt and too many tattoos and his jeans that are so extravagantly expensive they don’t even look expensive to the untrained eye.

He’s a rich person who doesn’t act rich, Michael thinks for the hundredth time. And he wonders how Geoff got like this. But something keeps him from asking.

Instead, Geoff asks Michael questions about his last trip abroad while smoke from the steaks in the pan billows in the small kitchen. Michael sits cross-legged on the counter, weaving the wildflowers into a circle.

Geoff stops every now and then to cross the kitchen to the counter where Michael sits--ostensibly to chop something or retrieve a utensil. Each time, though, he pauses and catches Michael in a soft kiss.

The last time he does it, Michael puts the circle of flowers up onto the other man’s head. Surprised, Geoff takes a step back and the crown falls down his forehead--too big. Michael laughs at the image but Geoff just looks back at him, and Michael is suddenly self conscious that maybe he’s been too silly, too informal, treating Geoff like he’s Michael’s boyfriend or something, sitting here on the counter in briefs and a tank top, doing the silly sort of shit he’d do to Ray. This man is older, this man started as his john--is _still_ his john, most of the time, despite what Geoff may say he wants.

But then, after a moment, Geoff’s tattooed hands find the crown and he straightens it. A crooked smirk slinks across his face.

“You should take a picture of this before it gets ruined,” he says to Michael, winking. “Blackmail material.”

Michael smiles and finds his phone on the counter, flicking it open to take a few shots as Geoff bats his eyelashes and the flowers fall again.

“The camera loves you, Geoff,” he says, closing the app down after he has far too many shots. He notices a text and flicks it open. His face falls.

\---

“What’s wong?”

Michael doesn’t answer, just drops off the counter and starts to pad out into the living room.

“I gotta make a phone call,” Michael says before he shuts the door to his bedroom.

Geoff can still hear him through the wall, though, after a moment. He must be talking to Jack. Geoff takes the flower crown off and sets it softly onto the counter as he eavesdrops.

“No, I can’t,” he says. “Jack I can’t take a client--... No, I get it--he’s important. There has to be someone else--I’m taking the night off, I told you--...”

There’s a long pause. Geoff’s spirits start to drop and he stops them cold. The mathematician in him springs to life. This is Michael’s job. He has a boss, just like Geoff. He takes pride in his work, just like Geoff. Sacrifices have to be made for work. He can allow Michael this. This is what it means to care.

Geoff has a grip on himself--and though he doesn’t feel better, he does feel ready to do the caring thing.

Geoff tries to prepare himself to leave. The steaks are almost done--he could box them up for Michael before he leaves probably, and get the vegetables in some tinfoil for him.

Michael says something quieter now. Geoff hears his own name on the other side of the wall.

“Yeah, **_Geoff_** Geoff.... OK… Right. Thanks for understanding.”

Michael is back in the kitchen after a minute, hoisting back up to the counter.

“You cool?” Geoff asks.

“Psh, the coolest,” Michael says, lifting the flowers to his own head.

Geoff can breathe again, the thought that Michael isn’t leaving flooding his chest like cool water.

\---

After dinner, Michael sets their dishes into the sink and asks if Geoff wants to watch a movie in his room. It makes Geoff feel like he’s back in college. Of course he does.

Michael puts “Reservoir Dogs” into the DVD player and the movie starts to play on the tiny flatscreen Michael has set up on top of his dresser. His room is adorable--every inch the opposite of Geoff’s sterile, modern bedroom.

There are big camping blankets across the floor, the foot of his bed, across the back of a chair. Trinkets and artifacts from his travels line shelves on one wall: most of a steer skull, a terrarium full of air plants on a brass base, an empty bottle of absinthe, a ouija board, broken sunglasses, a jar of change. An old classroom map hangs on one wall and his bed is pushed into a corner of the room. A string of lights glows softly, looped across one side of a free-standing mirror. A family of tiny potted cactuses and succulents line the windowsill.

It’s warm and lived in and very _Michael_.

Michael props up an assortment of pillows across the back of the wall and casually changes clothes as the movie starts.

There’s nothing erotic about it. No big strip tease, no coy glances shot over his shoulder at Geoff as he pulls off his briefs and tank top, hunts for fresh clothes in his closet. He pulls out clean black hipster underpants, a thin white t-shirt. Before he joins Geoff on the bed, Michael pulls off his tortoiseshell glasses and wipes them with the hem of the shirt.

It’s intimate. Not performative.

These are the moments Geoff has been living for lately. The times when Michael lets Geoff _see him_. The times when they can both believe that there’s a real line between sex work and intimacy.

There’s no visceral swell, no sudden heat. Just a squeeze of affection in his chest.

\---

When Michael returns to Geoff on the bed, the older man has shimmied out of his jeans and made himself comfortable up against the pillows along the wall. Force of habit makes Michael check his crotch. When your entire work week is dedicated to fostering boners, it’s hard to turn that piece of your brain off. But Geoff is just casual, looking up at Michael’s face--not hungry, not aroused. He doesn’t have a hard-on. He was just getting comfortable, just like Michael.

Michael joins him, Geoff putting an arm up to welcome him, Michael pressing his shoulder into the man’s side and letting his head fall across Geoff’s chest. They both shift to get comfortable while Mr. Pink goes on his anti-tipping diatribe on the screen.

Michael listens to the sound of Geoff breathing, his occasional chuckle at the movie they’ve both admittedly seen ten times. Geoff plays with the hem of Michael’s t-shirt.

By the time Pink is complaining about his alias, both of them are asleep, propped up there on the bed.

\---

When Michael wakes up, it’s the middle of the night and the DVD menu is looping endlessly. He finds the remote to click the TV off.

“Hey,” Michael says gently, a hand on Geoff’s shoulder, trying to wake him up. The man won’t be happy if he wakes up stiff the next morning from laying against a wall all night. Geoff doesn’t move though.

“Come on moron, wake up,” Michael says, pushing him harder. “Get under the covers.”

Geoff smiles, the expression lit from two sides by the cold, dim light streaming in through Michael’s window and the warm glow of the string of lights on the other side of the room.

“Hm. Wake up and go to sleep,” Geoff says, chuckling, his lids finally fluttering open. He moves just enough for Michael to get his blanket pulled back before finding a pillow and squirming down under the blankets. After a minute, Michael does the same.

Geoff’s hands find his hips there in the dark, and the man pulls Michael back towards himself until he’s squeezing Michael’s back into his chest. Geoff hums deep in his throat, and the warmth of the other man feels good. He hugs Michael tight for a minute before relaxing, threading an arm over Michael’s waist and falling back into deep, even breaths.

\---

Michael is the first to wake up the next morning. It’s cloudy and the morning light streams muted and strange into the room. They’re both in a tangle of blankets and sheets--neither one of them sleeps peacefully and together they’ve wrecked Geoff’s bed like this a few times. The mismatched blankets and sheets makes Michael’s bed, though, look that much crazier.

\---

Geoff wakes up in stages, as if different parts of his body have made a point to wake up whenever they’re good and ready. The first thing he feels is soft lips pressed on his face--his mouth and then his eyes and then his forehead. Then he registers the weight of hips straddling his thigh, rocking a little as the body on top of his moves to plant kisses on his face. His hands wake up as they go to touch those hips. And then something odd--harsh and cold--against his own hip.

His eyes open and his morning world is _Michael, Michael, Michael._

“Will you spend the day with me, Geoff?” his world wants to know.

Geoff closes his eyes. This life is too good to be true.

He opens his eyes. Michael is still there.

“Of course,” Geoff says.

Michael sits back then and the cold sensation is gone from Geoff’s hip as he watches Michael bring a bottle of champagne up to his lips, his hand fisted around the neck of the bottle. Geoff can’t help but laugh.

“We celebrating?” Geoff asks.

“Don’t know about you,” Michael says. “I am.”

Geoff laughs again, shaking his head, reaching his hands back up to catch Michael’s hips again. He can only just see the other man’s belly, taut under the hem of the shirt as he lifts the bottle up for another swig.

“We had a few bottles left over from New Year’s,” Michael says, pressing the cold bottle now into Geoff’s hand. “I thought about making you a mimosa, but we all know that shit’s just an excuse to drink champagne first thing in the morning.”

Geoff props himself up on an elbow and takes a drink. The champagne is not to his normal taste--cheap and sweet--but it’s not unpleasant. Nobody wants to drink a dry champagne at 8 a.m. anyway. As he brings the bottle down, steadying it beside him on the bed, Michael leans across him again. The kiss this time is not the gentle kiss of waking someone up. It is hungry and deep and it comes in time with the slow grind of hips down onto Geoff’s thigh.

Geoff breaks the kiss after a moment.

“Michael, we don’t have to--if you don’t want to--we can just--”

Michael only smirks, sitting back. His own erection is pressing up against the black cotton of his briefs and Michael strokes a hand across himself.

“I’m not _that_ good of an actor, Geoff,” Michael says. “I want you.”

Geoff appreciates the fact that Michael hasn’t lapsed into the voice he uses with clients. That familiar squeeze hits him, hearing Michael say it in his own voice--throaty, deep, a little ragged at the edges.

The younger man takes his turn with the bottle of champagne--and Geoff is feeling the alcohol already, knows Michael must be. When Michael is done, he tips some into Geoff’s mouth and they both laugh as it gets everywhere. Geoff finally takes the bottle from him to take a real swig, his other hand pressing into the dimples at the small of Michael’s back as he swallows.

“Do you really think this could work, Geoff,” Michael asks him. It strikes Geoff that the man is able to ask him such a serious question without looking like he’s gone serious at all.

“I like the odds,” Geoff says, smiling.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Yes, Michael,” he says immediately, seriously. “It could. It _will_.”

“Are you buzzed? I’m fuckin buzzed,” Michael says, breaking the moment--and Geoff wonders if Michael made himself uncomfortable or if it’s really a natural progression of thought. Michael leans down across his chest for another deep kiss, though, and Geoff tries not to care.

 

 


End file.
